Don’t sell Tinfoil Short … yet

I was taking a break from formulating exchange rate models (yeah, I know so much excitement, so little time over the

Something smells at Citigroup

summer) at the WSJ. Nothing grabs me quite like a market manipulation story. The headline is “Traders Blamed for Oil Spike”. So, stay with me here as I quote from that article.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission plans to issue a report next month suggesting speculators played a significant role in driving wild swings in oil prices — a reversal of an earlier CFTC position that augurs intensifying scrutiny on investors.

In a contentious report last year, the main U.S. futures-market regulator pinned oil-price swings primarily on supply and demand. But that analysis was based on “deeply flawed data,” Bart Chilton, one of four CFTC commissioners, said in an interview Monday.

The CFTC’s new review, due to be released in August, adds fuel to a growing debate over financial investors who bet on the direction of commodities prices by buying contracts tied to indexes. These speculators have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in contracts that were once dominated by producers and consumers who sought to hedge against oil-market volatility.

So, you have to remember last summer and those terrible oil price hikes that seemingly came out of no where, right? Thankfully, there’s a commission being set up to look into this and to look into what kind of regulations should be placed on speculation in markets of these kinds.

The debate over speculators underscores the shifting nature of commodities trading in recent years. Before the mid-1990s, these markets were dominated by entities that had physical dealings with the underlying commodity, and “speculators” who often took the opposite position, providing liquidity to markets.

But a new group of investors has emerged in recent years. Those who want to bet on commodities prices have increasingly put their money in indexes that track the value of futures contracts, in which investors promise to pay a certain amount in the future for oil and other commodities. As of July 2008, financial investors had about $300 billion riding on these indexes, roughly four times the level in January 2006, according to the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based watchdog.

Separately, these investors may buy derivatives, not directly traded on futures exchanges, that let them make contrary bets to offset their risks.

Crude-oil prices surged in July 2008 to a record $145 a barrel, then dropped to about $33 in December. Oil now trades at around $68 a barrel.

Hopefully, you’re still with me on this because here comes the intrigue. I may be putting on my tinfoil hat at this point but if you watched TV news yesterday you probably saw the article about absolutely, positively, in trouble Citigroup owing $100 million in Bonuses to one Andrew Hall. Now, you may remember that we fund Citigroup right now and that they are in business even though they are on double secret probation. The scuttlebutt is that this bonus is due this guy, because he earned it, but it’s going to have to be paid with a sort’ve pass through of taxpayer funds. Ring any bells yet?

Okay, so here’s my tinfoil hat part. Do you know how this guy made all this money?

The trader, Andrew J. Hall, heads Citigroup’s energy-trading unit, Phibro LLC — a secretive operation, run from the site of a former Connecticut dairy farm, that occasionally accounts for a disproportionate chunk of Citigroup income.

So get this, first we all had to pay these HIGH, HIGH gas prices last year because energy traders ran up oil prices, NOW, we as taxpayers get to pay this guy’s bonus because Citigroup’s big profit center was, wait a minute, wait for it, yup, you got it ENERGY TRADING!.

I’m going long on Tinfoil, for this one. Karl Denniger, what say you?

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